"BEAUTY IS EMBARRASSING" Friday through Monday, Northwest Film Center, nwfilm.org

Art can and should be fun. That's the simple but revolutionary tenet that has guided the life and career of Wayne White, the fascinating (and fun) subject of this admiring documentary by Neil Berkeley.

White first made a name for himself designing sets and characters for the great 1980s children's TV show "Pee-Wee's Playhouse." After that, he continued to work in television and on music videos, including Peter Gabriel's seminal "Big Time," before returning to his first love, puppetry

These days, White is perhaps best known for his series of typography paintings, in which pithy words or sayings are applied in a bold, 3-D style over conventional landscapes.

Combining the Southern gentility of his Tennessee upbringing with a self-deprecation and iconoclasm toward the art-world establishment, White is an utterly captivating guide to his own life. And interviews with folks such as Matt Groening, Todd Oldham and Pee-Wee himself, Paul Reubens, indicate that White is just as charismatic and genuine off-camera.

White is scheduled to attend the Friday night screening.

"CELL COUNT" and "A LONELY PLACE FOR DYING" "Cell Count" opens Friday, Living Room Theaters; "A Lonely Place for Dying" plays Friday through Tuesday at 5th Avenue Cinema and various McMenamins' Theaters (see www.alonelyplacefordying.com for details)

These two films with local ties are each promising examples of (sometimes overly) ambitious genre filmmaking on a shoestring budget.

Todd Freeman's Portland-shot "Cell Count" takes a claustrophobic approach to its mixture of David Cronenberg-style body horror and Robin Cook-style medical mayhem. When a desperate husband signs up his terminally ill wife and himself for a mysterious miracle cure, they find themselves quarantined along with other patients in an underground facility. Soon, the cure begins to manifest in unexpected and decidedly gruesome ways.

"A Lonely Place for Dying" also relies on a single setting for most of its action -- in this case an abandoned Mexican prison where, in 1972, a CIA agent engages in a cat-and-mouse hunt for the KGB mole in possession of evidence pinning war crimes in Vietnam on the United States. With a cast including James Cromwell and Michael Wincott, it's a sometimes stilted but sometimes effective spy-vs.-spy thriller. Director Justin Eugene Evans is a 1991 graduate of Clackamas High School and will conduct Q&A sessions following several of the screenings.

HITCHCOCK FEST Friday through Wednesday, Cinema 21, see www.cinema21.com for full schedule

Ten of the Master of Suspense's classic films will grace the big screen at Cinema 21 this week, offering a great opportunity for a pro-level seminar in audience manipulation.

From early British thrillers "The 39 Steps" and "The Lady Vanishes" to later efforts such as "Psycho" and "Marnie," each one is a must-see. And let's not forget "Vertigo," which is only the recently crowned Greatest Film of All Time, according to Sight & Sound magazine's once-a-decade poll.